Scientists in the Chinese city where Covid emerged planned to alter the coronaviruses and release them into bat caves 21 months before the pandemic began. The U.S. government, for its part, refused to fund the project for fear that it would backfire.
Wuhan scientists planned to release coronaviruses into bat caves 21 months before the pandemic
Dr. Peter Daszak, president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, proposed working with a group of scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct the research.
The experts wanted to genetically enhance coronaviruses and release them among bats in Yunnan, about 1,240 miles (2,000 km) southwest of Wuhan, in hopes of preventing the new viruses from jumping from bats to humans.
The proposals laid out plans to release a bat coronavirus with “new chimeric spike proteins,” which are detected in Covid, as part of a plan to inoculate them against the virus.
They also wanted to create a genetically enhanced virus that could more easily infect humans, according to documents unveiled last night.
The researchers asked the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) for $14.2 million in cash to fund the project.
But it rejected the proposal on the grounds that it would “endanger local communities”.
The documents, released by a team of academics investigating the origins of the pandemic, add to growing suspicions that the coronavirus may have accidentally leaked from Wuhan’s high-level biosecurity lab.
This comes after a whistleblower sensationally claimed that China deliberately spread Covid at a military tournament two months before the rest of the world knew about the deadly virus.
Since China originally alerted the world to a mysterious virus circulating in Wuhan in December 2019, debate has raged over its true origin.
China has repeatedly insisted that the virus has spread naturally to humans via bats, with some scientists agreeing that Covid most likely has a natural origin.
